The importance of air transport to socio-economic development cannot be over emphasised. In fact, an efficient and affordable air transport system in today’s world is not an option, rather it has become imperative, particularly with respect to tourism which has become a popular global leisure activity.
International tourist arrivals surpassed the milestone of one billion tourists globally for the first time in history in 2012. International tourism receipts (the travel item of the balance of payments) grew to US$1.03 trillion (€740 billion) in 2011, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 3.8% from 2010.
Our country is now emerging into the global tourism market and is set to utilise its full potential offering the unique eco and adventure tourism because of our geography and huge flora and fauna.
However, while we have a vibrant local air transport sector, we are still being affected by the adequacy of international flights which started many years ago when all the international airlines including Panam, British Airways, Air France,, KLM and Cubana airlines among others closed their operations, leaving only our Guyana Airways to service flights in and out of our country. From that time to now we still have not been able to have a stable and adequate international air transport system.
Strenuous efforts have been made and are being made by our government to bring in more airlines,but this has been with limited success as several companies came and flopped in a short span of time. And more recently North American Airlines, a major provider of international flights to and from Guyana closed its operations here,creating a serious void.
Caribbean Airlines, which to some extent has taken up the slack left by North American Airlines, has begun exploiting Guyanese passengers because of the lack of competition. In the process the airline has been charging extraordinarily high fees and there have also been substantiated charges of maltreatment of Guyanese passengers by the airline as well as harassment by Trinidadian immigration personnel.
It is known that the Trinidad market is not required to pay the increases demanded from the Guyanese market which Tourism Minister(ag) Irfaan Ali believes is unfair.
In some cases, a 50-minute flight to Trinidad and Tobago costs $US425 and tickets to the United States range from $US1,100 return as compared to a normal fare of $US765.

This, quite rightly, has prompted our government to consider taking the issue to the Caribbean Competition Commission because, as Minister Ali correctly observed: ”We are not anybody’s eyepass.”
It seems, somehow, that people from other Caribbean countries are still suffering from the hangover of when we were a nation of suitcase traders as a result of the acute shortages of all classes of consumer goods which made us the laughing stock of the Region.
They seem not to realise that our country is now one of the fastest growing economies in this hemisphere with sustained positive economic growth for six consecutive years;and we have moved from a low-income country to a lower middle-income one.
In order for us to unleash our full tourism potential, we have to find a permanent solution to the problem of providing adequate and affordable international flights.
Only recently, President Donald Ramotar at Guyana’s independence festival in Canada reiterated his government’s support for our burgeoning tourism sector.
In recent years, we have also seen tremendous investment by our local private sector in the tourism sector. However, if we do not solve this international flights bogeyman it could result in the stifling of our promising tourism industry and hurt our national economy.